Ahmed Yassin Palestinian Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? The Palestinian Authority declared three days of mourning and closed Palestinian schools.
What caused this closure?
What caused the closure of Palestinian schools?
The Palestinian Authority declared three days of mourning and closed Palestinian schools. Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh suggested, "This is the moment Sheikh Yassin dreamed about". The Hamas leadership said Ariel Sharon had "opened the gates of hell." Hamas called for retaliation against Israel. About 200,000 people took to the streets of the Gaza Strip for Yassin's funeral as Israeli forces declared a national alert.  The assassination of Yassin also led to the fact that Hamas, for the first time, named as the most popular movement in Palestine by the residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip two weeks after the assassination.  Abdel Aziz Rantisi was announced as the new head of Hamas. At a memorial service for Sheik Yassin, he declared that "The Israelis will not know security... We will fight them until the liberation of Palestine, the whole of Palestine." Publicly addressing the "military wing" of Hamas, Rantisi suggested, "The door is open for you to strike all places, all the time and using all means." Rantisi was himself killed by Israel on 17 April 2004 in an assassination almost identical to that of Yassin. He was killed by three rockets fired from a Gunship by the Israeli Military.  On 31 August 2004, at least 15 Israeli people were killed and 80 injured in a suicide attack against two Israeli buses in Beersheba. Hamas stated the attack was a revenge for the assassination of Rantisi and Yassin. Following the bombing, an estimated 20,000 Hamas supporters in Gaza took to Gaza's streets, celebrating the successful attack. CANNOTANSWER
"This is the moment Sheikh Yassin dreamed about
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin (1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) ( ) was a Palestinian imam and politician. He was a founder of Hamas, an Islamist Palestinian paramilitary organization and political party. Yassin also served as the spiritual leader of the organization. 

Yassin, a quadriplegic who was nearly blind, had used a wheelchair since a sporting accident at the age of 12. He was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at him as he was being wheeled from early morning prayers in Gaza City. His killing, in an attack that claimed the lives of both his bodyguards and nine bystanders, was internationally condemned. Two hundred thousand Palestinians attended his funeral procession.

Early life
Ahmed Yassin was born in al-Jura, a small village near the city of Ashkelon, in the British Mandate of Palestine. His date of birth is not known for certain: according to his Palestinian passport, he was born on 1 January 1929, but he claimed to have actually been born in 1937. His father, Abdullah Yassin, died when he was three years old. Afterward, he became known in his neighborhood as Ahmad Sa'ada after his mother Sa'ada al-Habeel. This was to differentiate him from the children of his father's other three wives. Together, Yassin had four brothers and two sisters. He and his entire family fled to Gaza, settling in al-Shati Camp after his village was ethnically-cleansed by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Yassin came to Gaza as a refugee. When he was 12, he sustained a severe spinal injury while wrestling his friend Abdullah al-Khatib. His neck was kept in plaster for 45 days. The damage to his spinal cord rendered him a quadraplegic for the rest of his life. Fearing a rift between his family and al-Khatib's, Yassin initially told his family that he sustained his injuries while playing leapfrog during a sports lesson with his school friends on the beach.

Although Yassin applied and attended Al-Azhar University in Cairo, he was unable to pursue his studies there due to his deteriorating health. He was forced to be educated at home where he read widely, particularly on philosophy and on religion, politics, sociology, and economics. His followers believe that his worldly knowledge made him "one of the best speakers in the Gaza Strip." During this time, he began delivering weekly sermons after Friday prayers, drawing large crowds of people.

After years of unemployment, he got a post as an Arabic language teacher at an elementary school in Rimal, Gaza. Headmaster Mohammad al-Shawa initially had reservations about Yassin, concerning the reception he would receive from the pupils due to his disability. However, according to al-Shawa, Yassin handled them well and his popularity grew, especially among the more scholarly children. His teaching methods reportedly provoked mixed reactions among parents because he encouraged his students to attend the mosque an additional two times a week. Having a regular job gave Yassin financial stability, and he married one of his relatives Halima Yassin in 1960 at the age of 22. The couple had eleven children.

Involvement in the Israel–Palestinian conflict
Yassin was actively involved in setting up a Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1973, the Islamic charity Mujama al-Islamiya was established in Gaza by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and the organization was recognized by Israel in 1979. In 1984 he and others were jailed for secretly stockpiling weapons, but in 1985 he was released as part of the Jibril Agreement. In 1987, during the First Intifada, Yassin co-founded Hamas with Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, originally calling it the "paramilitary wing" of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, and becoming its spiritual leader.

In 1989, Yassin was arrested by Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering killings of alleged Palestinian collaborators. In 1997, Yassin was released from Israeli prison as part of an arrangement with Jordan following a failed assassination attempt of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal by the Israeli Mossad in Jordan. Yassin was released in exchange for two Mossad agents who had been arrested by Jordanian authorities, on the condition that he refrained from continuing to call for suicide bombings against Israel. The New York Times reported about his poor health at the time: "Sheik Ahmad Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, back home in Gaza after his release by Israel, is so frail he drinks only with help."

Following his release, Yassin resumed his leadership of Hamas. He immediately repeated his calls for attacks on Israel, using tactics including suicide bombings, thus violating the condition of his release. He also sought to maintain relations with the Palestinian Authority, believing that a clash between the two groups would be harmful to the interests of the Palestinian people. Yassin was intermittently placed under house arrest by the Authority. Each time he was eventually released, often after extended demonstrations by his supporters. Yassin criticized the outcome of the 2003 Aqaba summit. His group initially declared a temporary truce with Israel. However, in July 2003, the truce unravelled after a Hamas suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus killed 21 people the previous month. Israeli forces killed two Hamas members in retaliation.

On 6 September 2003, an Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-16 fired several missiles on a building in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip. Yassin was in the building at the time but survived. Israeli officials later confirmed that Yassin was the target of the attack. His injuries were treated at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Yassin responded to the media that "Days will prove that the assassination policy will not finish the Hamas. Hamas leaders wish to be martyrs and are not scared of death. Jihad will continue and the resistance will continue until we have victory, or we will be martyrs."

Yassin further promised that Hamas would teach Israel an "unforgettable lesson" as a result of the assassination attempt. Yassin made no attempt to guard himself from further attempts on his life or hide his location. Journalists sometimes visited his Gaza address and Yassin maintained a routine daily pattern of activity, including being wheeled every morning to a nearby mosque.

Reem Riyashi's suicide bombing at the Erez crossing on 14 January 2004, which killed four civilians, was believed by the Israeli military to have been directly ordered by Yassin. Yassin suggested that the suicide bomber was fulfilling her "obligation" to make jihad, and Israel's Deputy Defence Minister responded by publicly declaring that Yassin was "marked for death". Yassin denied any involvement in the attack.

Involvement in attacks on Israel

Yassin was a founder and leader of Hamas, which is regarded as a terrorist organization by a number of national governments. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon characterized Yassin as the "mastermind of Palestinian terror" and a "mass murderer." The Israeli government repeatedly asserted that Yassin was responsible for a number of terrorist attacks, which targeted and killed civilians.

The Israeli government said the targeted killing was in response to dozens of suicide attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs defended the assassination of Yassin:

Yassin was the dominant authority of the Hamas leadership, which was directly involved in planning, orchestrating and launching terror attacks carried out by the organization. In this capacity, Yassin personally gave his approval for the launching of Qassam rockets against Israeli cities, as well as for the numerous Hamas terrorist bombings and suicide operations. In his public appearances and interviews, Yassin called repeatedly for a continuation of the 'armed struggle' against Israel, and for an intensification of the terrorist campaign against its citizens. The successful operation against Yassin constitutes a significant blow to a central pillar of the Hamas terrorist organization, and a major setback to its terrorist infrastructure.

In his statement Yassin declared that Hamas did target Israeli civilians, but only in direct retaliation for the death of Palestinian civilians. In his thinking this was a necessary tactic to "show the Israelis they could not get away without a price for killing our people." In June 2003, after visiting al-Rantisi in hospital after a failed Israeli missile attack against him, Yassin told reporters: "Israel is targeting Palestinian civilians, so Israeli civilians should be targeted. From now on, all Israeli people are targets." "We got Israel's message. They should now expect the answer."

Views on the peace process 
Yassin's views on the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis were ambiguous. He supported armed resistance against Israel and asserted that Palestine is an Islamic land "consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day" and that no Arab leader had the right to give up any part of this territory. Concerning that territorial conflict, Yassin's rhetoric did not distinguish between Israelis and Jews, at one point stating that "reconciliation with the Jews is a crime." However, film of him exists stating he loved all people including Jews whom he regarded as his religious cousins, and explaining his conflict with them is purely over land he regarded as stolen territory. Yassin's rhetoric was often scrutinized in the news media. On one occasion, he opined that Israel "must disappear from the map." Yassin's declaration that "We chose this road, and will end with martyrdom or victory" later became a repeated mantra among Palestinians.

Yassin on several occasions proposed long-term ceasefire agreements, or truces, so called Hudnas, in exchange for Israeli concessions. All such offers were rejected by Israel. Following his release from Israeli prison in 1997, he proposed a ten-year truce in exchange for total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza and a stop to Israeli attacks on civilians. In 1999, in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper, he again offered a truce:
We have to be realistic. We are talking about a homeland that was stolen a long time ago in 1948 and again in 1967. My generation today is telling the Israelis, 'Let's solve this problem now, on the basis of the 1967 borders. Let's end this conflict by declaring a temporary ceasefire. Let's leave the bigger issue for future generations to decide.' The Palestinians will decide in the future about the nature of relations with Israel, but it must be a democratic decision.

Assassination
Yassin was killed in an Israeli attack on 22 March 2004. While he was being wheeled out of an early morning prayer session in Gaza City, an Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship fired Hellfire missiles at Yassin and both of his bodyguards. Before the attack, Israeli F-16 jets flew overhead to obscure the noise of the approaching helicopters. Yassin always used the same direction every morning to go to the same mosque in the Sabra district that is  from his home.

Yassin and his bodyguards were killed instantly, along with nine bystanders. Another 12 people were injured in the operation, including two of Yassin's sons. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, Yassin's Deputy, became the Hamas leader after his assassination.

Reaction to assassination
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, condemned the killing. The UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution condemning the killing supported by votes from 31 countries including the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa, with 2 votes against and 18 abstentions. The Arab League council also expressed condemnation, as did the African Union.

A draft resolution condemning the extrajudicial execution of Yassin and six other Palestinians, as well as all terrorist attacks against civilians was brought before the United Nations Security Council and vetoed by the United States, with United Kingdom, Germany, and Romania abstaining. The United States explained that the draft resolution should have condemned Hamas explicitly following its sponsored suicide bombings in Ashdod the week before.

Palestinian
The Palestinian Authority declared three days of mourning and closed Palestinian schools. Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh suggested, "This is the moment Sheikh Yassin dreamed about". The Hamas leadership said Ariel Sharon had "opened the gates of hell." Hamas called for retaliation against Israel. About 200,000 people took to the streets of the Gaza Strip for Yassin's funeral as Israeli forces declared a national alert.

The assassination of Yassin also led to the fact that Hamas, for the first time, was named as the most popular movement in Palestine by the residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip two weeks after the assassination.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi was announced as the new head of Hamas. At a memorial service for Sheik Yassin, he declared that "The Israelis will not know security... We will fight them until the liberation of Palestine, the whole of Palestine." Publicly addressing the "military wing" of Hamas, Rantisi suggested, "The door is open for you to strike all places, all the time and using all means." Rantisi was himself killed by Israel on 17 April 2004 in an assassination almost identical to that of Yassin. He was killed by three rockets fired from a Gunship by the Israeli Military.

On 31 August 2004, at least 15 Israeli people were killed and 80 injured in a suicide attack against two Israeli buses in Beersheba. Hamas stated the attack was a revenge for the assassination of Rantisi and Yassin. Following the bombing, an estimated 20,000 Hamas supporters in Gaza took to Gaza's streets, celebrating the successful attack.

Israeli
Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Defense Minister, branded Yassin "the Palestinian Bin Laden" and said, "If we have to balance how many more terrorists Yassin would have sent, how many terror attacks he would have approved, if we weigh this on the scales, we acted rightly".

Avraham Poraz, Israel's Interior Minister and member of the centrist Shinui Party, said he believed the assassination of Yassin "was a bad idea because I am afraid of a revenge coming from the Palestinian side, from the Hamas side." Shimon Peres, then leader of the Labour opposition, was critical of the assassination, suggesting that it "could lead to an escalation of terror".

Arab world
King Abdullah II of Jordan described the assassination as a "crime"; Lebanon's president Emile Lahud vehemently denounced the Israeli act as "...a crime [which] will not succeed in liquidating the Palestinian cause"; Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah said: "Violence will increase now because violence always breeds violence"; the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mohammed Akef, described Yassin as a "martyr" and his assassination a "cowardly operation."

Western world
Jack Straw, then British Foreign Secretary, said: "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself – and it is fully entitled to do that – against the terrorism which affects it, within international law. But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing and we condemn it. It is unacceptable, it is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives." The European Union's foreign policy head Javier Solana expressed concern that it might impede the peace process.

In response to a question about the killing, U.S. President George W. Bush responded:As far as the Middle East, it's a troubled region, and the attacks were troubling. There needs to be a focused, concerted effort by all parties to fight terror. Any country has a right to defend itself from terror. Israel has the right to defend herself from terror. And as she does so, I hope she keeps consequences in mind as to how to make sure we stay on the path to peace.

United States Representative to the United Nations John Negroponte stated that the United States was "deeply troubled by this action by the Government of Israel", while asserting that the U.S. would not support any U.N. Security Council statement condemning Israel's assassination of Yassin that did not include a condemnation of "Hamas terrorist attacks". According to his statement to the UN Security Council,

See also

 Hamas
 Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi
 Muslim Brotherhood

Notes and references

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

External links
 Reports on death
 "IDF strike kills Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin" (Israeli MFA)
 
"Assassination of Sheik Yasin Opened Pandora's box"
 Interactive Guide: Sheikh Yassin assassination – The Guardian
 Profiles of Yassin
 BBC Obituary
 Guardian Obituary
 UN Response
 U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Condemning Israel for Hamas Killing

1937 births
2004 deaths
20th-century criminals
Al-Azhar University alumni
Assassinated Hamas members
Assassinated Palestinian politicians
Blind politicians
Deaths by Israeli airstrikes
Hamas leaders
Male criminals
Palestinian criminals
Palestinian imams
Palestinian Islamists
Palestinian Sunni Muslims
People with tetraplegia
Politicians with physical disabilities
Closure may refer to:

Conceptual

Psychology
 Closure (psychology), the state of experiencing an emotional conclusion to a difficult life event

Computer science
 Closure (computer programming), an abstraction binding a function to its scope
 Relational database model: Set-theoretic formulation and Armstrong's axioms for its use in database theory

Mathematics
 Closure (mathematics), a property
 Closure (topology), for a set, the smallest closed set containing that set

Philosophy
 Epistemic closure, a principle in epistemology
 Deductive closure, a principle in logic
 Cognitive closure, a principle in philosophy of mind
 Closure: A Short History of Everything, a philosophical book by Hilary Lawson

Sociology
 Closure (sociology)
 Closure, a concept in the social construction of technology

Physical objects
 Closure (container) used to seal a bottle, jug, jar, can, or other container
 Closure (wine bottle), a stopper
 Hook-and-eye closure

Arts and entertainment

Film and television
 Straightheads, a 2007 British thriller film, US release title Closure
 "Closure" (The X-Files), a 2000 episode of the television series The X-Files
 "Closure" (8 Simple Rules episode), a 2005 episode of the sitcom 8 Simple Rules
 "Closure" (Raines), a 2007 episode of the crime drama Raines
 "Closure" (Tru Calling), a 2004 episode of the supernatural drama Tru Calling
 A two-part episode, split between seasons 1 and 2 of Law and Order: SVU
 "Closure" (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), a 2015 episode of the television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Music
 Closure (band), Canadian rock band
 Closure (video), a 1997 Nine Inch Nails video set

Albums and EPs
 Closure (Closure album), 2003 album by Closure
 Closure (Integrity album), 2001 album by Integrity
 Closure (Spahn Ranch album), 2001
 Closure: Live, 2001 live album by Theatre of Tragedy
 Closure, 2004 EP by Everclear

Songs
 "Closure", by Aly & AJ from Insomniatic, 2007
 "Closure" (Cadet song), single by Cadet, 2017
 "Closure" (Chevelle song), by Chevelle from Wonder What's Next, 2002
 "Closure", by Divine Heresy from Bleed the Fifth, 2007
 "Closure", by Gabrielle from Always, 2007
 "Closure", single by Hayley Warner, 2015
 "Closure", by Hood from Outside Closer, 2005
 "Closure", by Maroon 5 from Red Pill Blues, 2017
 "Closure", by Opeth from Damnation, 2003
 "Closure" (Scarlett Belle song), single by Scarlett Belle, 2010
 "Closure", by The Story So Far from Under Soil and Dirt, 2011
 "Closure", by Taylor Swift from "Evermore"

Other arts and entertainment
 Closure (video game), a 2012 puzzle game
 Closure: A Short History of Everything, a philosophical book by Hilary Lawson
 Poetic closure, the sense of conclusion given at the end of a poem

Other uses
 Closure or cloture, a motion in parliamentary procedure to bring debate to a quick end
 Closure (business), the process by which an organization ceases operations

 Closure (atmospheric science), a type of experiment in aerosol and cloud studies

See also
 "C7osure (You Like)", a 2019 song by Lil Nas X
 Clozure, an implementation of Common Lisp
 Clojure, a dialect of Lisp symbiotic with the Java platform Closure or need for closure (NFC) (used interchangeably with need for cognitive closure (NFCC)) are social psychological terms that describe an individual's desire for a clear, firm answer to a question and an aversion toward ambiguity.  

The term "need" denotes a motivated tendency to seek out information. The need for closure is the motivation to find an answer to an ambiguous situation. This motivation is enhanced by the perceived benefits of obtaining closure, such as the increased ability to predict the world and a stronger basis for action.  This motivation is also enhanced by the perceived costs of lacking closure, such as dealing with uncertainty.  A sense of closure is not usually possible with ambiguous loss, such as a missing person, and the hoped-for benefits, such as a sense of relief after the death of a person who inflicted harm, are not necessarily obtained. Because of this mismatch between what individuals hope will happen if they achieve closure and what they actually experience, the idea of getting closure has been described as a myth.

The level of the need for cognitive closure is a fairly stable individual characteristic. It can affect what information individuals seek out and how they process it. This need can be affected by situational factors. For example, in the presence of circumstances that increase the need for closure, individuals are more likely to use simple cognitive structures to process information.

According to Kruglanski et al., need for closure exerts its effects via two general tendencies: the urgency tendency (the inclination to attain closure as quickly as possible) and the permanence tendency (the tendency to maintain it for as long as possible). Together, these tendencies may produce the inclinations to seize and then freeze on early judgmental cues, reducing the extent of information processing and hypothesis generation and introducing biases in thinking.

Need for Closure Scale
The need for closure in social psychology is thought to be a fairly stable dispositional characteristic that can, nonetheless, be affected by situational factors.  The Need for Closure Scale (NFCS) was developed by Arie Kruglanski, Donna Webster, and Adena Klem in 1993 and is designed to operationalize this construct and is presented as a unidimensional instrument possessing strong discriminant and predictive validity.

People who score high on the need for closure scale are more likely to exhibit impression primacy effects to correspondence bias, make stereotypical judgments, assimilate new information to existing, active beliefs, and, in the presence of prior information, resist persuasion. Someone rating low on need for closure will express more ideational fluidity and creative acts.  Items on the scale include statements such as "I think that having clear rules and order at work is essential to success," and "I do not like situations that are uncertain." Items such as "Even after I've made up my mind about something, I am always eager to consider a different opinion," and "I like to have friends who are unpredictable" are reverse scored.

Composed of 42 items, the scale has been used in numerous research studies and has been translated into multiple languages. Although Webster and Kruglanski (1994) treated the Need for Closure Scale as unidimensional (i.e., as measuring a single factor), the scale actually contains two orthogonal factors, decisiveness and need for structure. Thus, using a total scale score can overlook effects for each factor and complicate interpretations. In 2007, Roets and Van Hiel tried to resolve this issue by revising the scale so it would measure only one thing.  They came up with a set of new decisiveness items that provided a viable alternative for the old Decisiveness subscale of the NFCS, which was poorly related to the other NFCS facet scales and had questionable validity. The new items were developed with explicit reference to decisiveness but formulated in such a way that they relate to the need rather than to the ability to decide. In 2011, Roets and Van Hiel created an abridged and empirically validated NFC scale consisting of only 15 items from the original NFC.

NFCS items correlate positively with authoritarianism, intolerance of ambiguity, dogmatism, need for order and structure and negatively with cognitive complexity and impulsivity, among several other cognitive tools and personality traits.

High NFC scores consistently correlate with items on the C-Scale (conservatism) as well as other measures of political and social conservatism.

Need to avoid

Functionally opposite to the need for closure is the need to avoid closure. Need to avoid closure reflects the desire to suspend judgmental commitment. It also contains the subcategories specific and non-specific need to avoid closure. Avoidance of specific closure reflects the desire to avoid specific answers to one's questions. The non-specific need to avoid closure is much like the need for closure irrespective of whether or not this new knowledge points to a conclusion having positive or negative implications for them.

The need to avoid closure may stem from the perceived costs of possessing closure (e.g., envisioned penalties for an erroneous closure or perceived drawbacks of actions implied by closure) and the perceived benefits of lacking closure (e.g., immunity from possible criticism of any given closure). The need to avoid closure is controlled by the desire to avoid negative consequences of achieving closure of a situation or to continue the benefits of not closing but elongating a situation.

The need and avoidance of closure are conceptualized as ends of a continuum ranging from strong strivings for closure to strong resistance of closure. This is applied in the NFC Scale.

Lack of
The lack of closure leaves a situation in ambiguity. People high in need for closure seek to avoid this ambiguity at all costs where people high in need to avoid closure strive to make situations more ambiguous. Some perceived benefits of cognitive closure may relate to predictability, the basis for action, or social status accorded the possessors of knowledge (i.e., "experts"). Similarly, some perceived costs of lacking closure may relate to the additional time and effort required to attain closure, or the unpleasantness of process whereby closure must be reached. Occasionally, however, lack of closure maybe perceived to offer various advantages such as freedom from a constraining commitment, neutrality in an acrimonious dispute, the maintenance of a romantic mystery and so on. Though lack of closure is generally thought of as being negative, it is clear that closure and lack of closure have positive or negative implications depending on the person and situation surrounding them.

Implications
A need for cognitive closure may occur while engaged in goal-driven or goal-motivated cognitive functions (e.g., attention control, memory recall, information selection and processing, cognitive inhibition, etc.). Ideally, people should attempt to acquire new knowledge to satisfy questions regarding particular issues (specific cognitive closure) irrespective of whether that knowledge points to a conclusion having positive or negative implications for them (non-specific cognitive closure).  But because urgency and permanence are central to the  motivational core of this overall process, individuals (or groups) may be compelled, consciously or unconsciously, to obtain information prematurely and irrespective of content.

A high need for cognitive closure might then invite bias in:
 selecting the most relevant information one should attend to for increasing chances of adaptation
 initiating and sustaining cognitive manipulations that are required to achieve particular outcomes
 making judgments and assessments of input information
 weighing information during the course of decision-making

For example, the level of NFCC can influence decision-making strategies used by an individual. In a study by Choi et al. that manipulated NFCC, the authors found that a higher NFCC was associated with a preference for using the faster "attribute-based search" which involves examining all available alternatives on one attribute and then moving on to the next attribute. Individuals with a lower NFCC, in contrast, used the "alternative-based search", such that they examine all attributes of one alternative, then move on to the next alternative. Thus, studying NFCC has huge implications for consumer buying behavior.

Need for closure has also been found to have a role in race- and gender-based prejudice. Roets describes a conceptual fit between Allport's "motivated cognitive style" of individuals who exhibit prejudice and Kruglanksi and Webster's concept of high-NFCC individuals, such that both display urgency tendency i.e. the desire for quick, definite answers and permanence tendency i.e., the perseverance of the obtained answer in spite of contradictory information. Thus, NFC provides a strong empirical base for Allport's hypothesized underlying cognitive style of prejudiced individuals.
 
A high need also induces the tendency to form knowledge more quickly, tying into other concepts, such as a tendency to prefer  autocracy i.e. "hard" forms of influence that motivate the targets to comply with the agents' demands quickly via the promise of positive consequences or the threat of negative consequences, rather than "soft" forms of influence that might use extended argumentation or persuasion.

Additionally, and especially in those with strong needs for certainty (as measured on NFC Scale), the impulse to achieve cognitive closure may sometimes produce or evoke a mood instability, and/or truncated perceptions of one's available behavioral choices, should some newly acquired information challenge preconceptions that they had long considered to be certain, permanent and inviolate e.g. certain religious or ethical views and values.

Thus it is apparent that the need for cognitive closure may have important implications for both personal and inter-personal thoughts and actions, including some related to educational processes and school learning.

In education
Formal education environments, such as elementary and secondary schools, present opportunities for learners to acquire new knowledge and skills, and to achieve deep, domain-specific conceptual mastery which, through well-designed pedagogical guidance and academic study, may enhance future career readiness, civic engagement, and general well-being.  However, although it is understood that the basic principles of learning assert the importance of attending to students’ prior knowledge, fostering conceptual understanding, and cultivating metacognitive awareness, students must also become engaged and be willing to tolerate and cognitively work through the intellectual ambiguity often associated with exposure to novel information and tasks.

Yet for students who have high need for cognitive closure, this phenomenon may inadvertently lead to the inhibition of cognitive functions and processes essential to the learning process, so that they can maintain their prior certainty and/or perceived permanence of personally or socially important ideas, even if those ideas or knowledge are distinctly unrelated to any specific content or information being presented in the classroom. In instances such as these, an individual's desire for cognitive closure in another area may outweigh her/his motivation to expend cognitive resources toward learning new information. As a result, the student may appear uninterested and susceptible to under-achieving e.g. poor grades or not performing to expected levels.

Unfortunately, in the absence of understanding and consideration of how need for cognitive closure may influence academic and/or achievement motivation, educators may erroneously conclude that a student does not have a desire to learn or that she/he has a cognitive, psychological, intellectual, or behavioral deficiency that is impeding the learning process.  This is not to suggest that need for cognitive closure is a suitable explanation for all learning problems; however, in working with students who appear to be experiencing learning challenges manifested through amotivation or low motivation, it would not be unreasonable to explore need for cognitive closure as a potential factor.

Research
Individuals scoring high on the NFCS are more likely to attempt to draw closure by relying on incipient cues, and the first-encountered apparent fit. The need for closure is also said to predispose a very narrow or shallow information search, along with a higher tendency to use cognitive heuristics, when seeking solutions. (Van Hiel and Mervielde, 2003)

In studies on creativity, individuals with high need-for-closure ratings had low creativity scores.  Those low in need-for-closure more frequently produced novel solutions that motivated and inspired others in their groups, and the outcomes of the projects in which they participated were rated as correspondingly more productive.

Most research on the need for closure has investigated its relation to social stimuli. However, recent research suggests that it may also predict responses to non-social stimuli. In particular, the need for closure predicts an evaluative bias against deviant non-social stimuli (e.g., the letter "A" presented in a category of letter "B"s)

"Closure" has also been used more loosely to refer to the outcome of an experience which, by virtue of its completion, demonstrates a therapeutic value. Legal scholars have linked "closure" to "catharsis" and "satisfaction" and at times the legal system may be enlisted into an individual's desire for the cessation of uncertainty. In the case of the death penalty, for example, victims seeking "closure" may adopt effective strategies as diverse as retribution, on one hand, and forgiveness on the other.

See also

References

External links
Robert Fulford's column about the word "closure"
Comments on the Concept of Closure
Sorrow and Closure
Closure in Gestalt psychology:
Sensation and Perception
Gestalt Therapy / Gestalt Psychology

Psychotherapy